


the choir room

by sunflowershayne



Series: mcu (mandon cinematic universe) [2]
Category: Smosh
Genre: Alternate Universe - Frenemies, Bisexuality, Both literally and figuratively, Closeted Character, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Frenemies, Gay Panic, Kissing, M/M, Making Out, Music Teacher Ian Hecox, Resolved Sexual Tension, Slow Dancing, Trapped In A Closet, bc ofc there's dancing, he ships mandon. HARD, mandon now canonically has to have dancing in its fics, the epic highs and lows of high school choir, there's dancing, ya boi don't fuck around with that "will they/won't they" bullshit!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-01-31 19:29:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18597910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowershayne/pseuds/sunflowershayne
Summary: Brandon McMillan has a huge crush on the most talented guy in his choir class. The big problem seems to be that the guy in question absolutely cannot stand him.





	the choir room

"Um, excuse me, Mr. Stein? Can I switch seats?"

Brandon didn't even know what the hell he'd done wrong. He had literally just taken a seat next to Marcus Wilson, and all of a sudden, he was asking to be moved. He turned to face Marcus and asked, "What, is sitting down illegal?"

"Yeah, when it's you."

"I don't know what your problem with me is, but I'm not moving, and neither are you. There aren't any seats left in the room."

Marcus scoffed. "I'll sit on the floor, then. I don't care where I sit, as long as I'm not sitting anywhere close to you."

"What's your deal, man?!"

Finally, after Brandon had raised his voice, their argument caught the attention of Mr. Stein, a thirty-something music teacher with a relatively full beard and a nice demeanor. Brandon had always thought that Stein had liked him -- he was a good student, auditioned for the school musical every year, and even helped paint sets and organize music for him when he could. He was the perfect music student. He was even breaking the stereotype of jocks not being interested in the arts, for God's sake. He was the Troy Bolton of Riverview High School.

Stein looked at the two boys, from Brandon's look of confused anger to Marcus's almost completely flat affect. "I don't know what's wrong with you two sitting next to each other."

Marcus let out a breath through his nose and the corner of his mouth turned upward, in a half-assed smile. "Well, I'm worried that Mr. McMillan is going to bully me. After all, I'm not all that popular, and his friends have been mocking me ever since they joined choir. And who brought them in? Oh, yeah. That's right." He turned his face toward where Brandon was sitting and raised his eyebrows. It was almost a challenge. He looked like he was almost about to say, "Oh yeah, what now, bitch?"

Brandon looked at Marcus, fire burning behind his eyes. "I never asked them to join, plus, I'm not telling any of them to bully anybody. In fact, if you'd tell me who decided to mock you, I'd gladly have a chat with Coach about it." This was also absolutely true. Brandon was 100% the type to stand up to injustices he knew were happening.

"Oh, sure. Act like a hero, even though we all know that the only reason you and your lackeys are even here are to pick up girls that're way too good for you."

That made Brandon want to immediately retaliate by shouting "I'm gay, actually!" But that would just mean outing himself and being the subject of everyone's ridicule. Despite being in the pretty solidly blue state of California, the people of Riverview weren't necessarily all that accepting of others. It was like a small town surrounded by nothing but cityscape -- on the outside, it was idyllic, too good to be true, inconceivably perfect, but on the inside, it was a black hole that sucked out all of the air and happiness from the atmosphere.

Before he could actually out himself, however, Mr. Stein stepped in. "Okay, okay. McMillan is going to stay here. Wilson, if anything happens or he says anything, let me know. And you two are both going to stay after school with me for detention. If you can't learn to get along, we're going to keep working on it and I'm gonna make sure that you two can at least stand next to each other without swinging fists by the end of the year."

Brandon wasn't too fussed about this resolution. He trusted Mr. Stein's judgement, plus he never hated Marcus. As long as Marcus was going to be willing to cooperate, so was he.

And since Marcus was a fairly smart person, despite the look in his eyes that said that he would've continued this fight forever if he could feasibly have done so, he nodded. With crossed arms and a completely emotionless expression, he replied, "Fine. That works for me. Although Mr. McMillan might want to tell Coach West that he won't be able to make it to practice today."

Under his breath, Brandon argued, "I don't even have any practice today."

And he was damn lucky that neither Mr. Stein nor Marcus heard it.

* * *

Later that day, at 3:30, Brandon walked into the choir room again, looking around to see if he could see Marcus there. He wasn't really expecting much, since Marcus was never a punctual type of person -- he knew this from being in his classes for the past 13 years or so, after all. Generally, if there was a social function, Marcus would either not attend, or he would show up at least a half hour late.

But today, Marcus was all about subverting expectations, as when Brandon entered the classroom, he was sitting in the same seat as he had been earlier, propping his feet up on the desk. "Hey."

The sudden sound of another person's voice almost scared him, and he jumped a little. "Jesus Christ, you can't warn somebody when you're going to pop out of the shadows?"

"That's kind of the whole point of 'popping out of the shadows,' isn't it?"

Brandon opened his mouth to reply, but another voice, startling him again, cut him off. "Okay, so. You two are going to help me today. For the next 30 minutes, I'm sending you two into the Sheets Room."

Mr. Stein gestured toward a closet with a tattered sign that some high school senior from 3 years ago had drawn, with "Sheets Room" written on it. It was poorly named (or maybe not, but in Brandon's opinion, it was easily mistakable for a laundry room without the added context that this was, in fact, a place of music) as such because it was where the sheet music that Mr. Stein used for concerts and musicals was kept in storage.

The thought of having to lift all of that paper made Brandon's muscles ache. Hopefully he and Marcus would be delegated to an easier task, like refiling them all and making sure everything was in alphabetical order. Or maybe they were supposed to be errand boys and grab some new sheet music from the main office on the second floor? That's where the mail usually got sent, and carrying just a couple of music books would be more than easy compared to the gargantuan stacks of sheet music that were scattered across the floor in there. Not even to mention the music that was actually stored properly, either.

"So, what exactly are we doing in the Sheets Room, then?" Marcus asked. The question came at such an opportune time that Brandon questioned if his mind had been read by the taller boy.

Mr. Stein looked at them and said, "Organizing. I managed to actually downsize a bit in there over summer break last year, so there's not a lot. You should be done in the 30 minutes that you're here. I just don't want to do anymore of it myself. Don't tell anyone I said this, but if I have to look at another piece of sheet music and sing the alphabet to myself to categorize it again, I'm going to shoot myself."

Marcus stifled a laugh, but Brandon was too shocked at the way that his teacher had spoken to react the same way, or any way at all.

"So. Chop chop. Bonding activity. And if I see you two goofing off, I'm gonna have you back again. And I will force you to sing "Seasons of Love" from RENT. And nobody wants that."

There was a second of silence before Marcus started humming the beginning under his breath. Even without the words, Brandon was following along. 525,600 minutes. Well, not counting the 30 minutes he'd be losing of his year in the Sheets Room with Marcus.

It was a goddamn shame that Marcus had such a shitty attitude, because he really was a talented musician. He naturally had almost no trouble hitting notes or matching pitch, and would often times create harmonies and sing them, totally unprompted. He had a great voice, and he was also a really good writer from what little he'd been forced to share in their English classes over the years. He already knew that Marcus wanted to be a musician. It had been his dream job since they were in kindergarten together.

The thoughts that were swelling inside of Brandon's head all flew away as Marcus jabbed him in the side lightly with his elbow. "Hey, are you gonna just sit there with your mouth open and drool all over the desks, or are we gonna get this done so we don't ever have to do this again?"

He shook the cobwebs out of his head and nodded along. "Yeah, lead the way," he mumbled.

Marcus took this invitation, and took long, confident strides toward the Sheets Room. He opened the door and bowed. "M'lady."

Brandon snorted. "Jesus, are you wearing an invisible fedora or something, or are you just... like that?"

"Both."

He entered the room, and found that it was basically completely clean, save for a few hastily stapled-together copies of songs from musicals strewn about the floor. Marcus entered behind him, closing the door and making sure to pull on the doorknob extra hard. The doors in the choir room were probably older than Brandon's great grandpa, and they barely wanted to shut anymore.

Marcus clapped his hands together, a determined gaze in his eyes. "Okay, so. This doesn't look that difficult. We can tag team this and be done in like, 10 minutes, tops."

He snapped out of his mental funk and nodded in response. He stepped toward where the most concentrated pile was, and he crouched to pick some of the pages up, scanning the titles of the songs. He recognized some, from some relatively recent musicals. He even found himself humming the songs to himself at times. It took only 5 minutes to organize them all, actually. Brandon made sure to tease Marcus about his estimate being off, which earned him a middle finger from the brunet.

When they went to open the door, however...

"What the hell?" asked the taller of the two boys, hand frantically turning the knob.

Brandon was confused. His first thought was that maybe he was getting pranked, so he said, in response, "Ha ha, very funny, man. Now open the door for real."

"I can't! It's locked from the outside!"

They both looked to one another with bulging eyes, then to the doorknob, with Marcus's hand still twisting and turning it in sporadic bursts. Were it not for the fact that the two of them couldn't stand one another, this would've been a comedic moment.

"So, um. Maybe we should yell for Stein?" Marcus asked, mostly rhetorically.

"Good plan. Which of us can yell louder?"

"Um, I think you can. I've heard you yell before. Back in like, fifth grade, when we played dodgeball and you hit the glasses off of Cassidy Martinez? After that, all of the non-baseball boys called you The Banshee. Those war screams are unforgettable. I think that "Tiny" Tyson Finn still has nightmares about you."

That illicited a laugh out of Brandon. "Fair enough. You might want to plug your ears though, if you want to keep your hearing after this."

Marcus took the warning and put his fingers in his ears. Brandon took a second to make sure that Marcus was prepared, and then let loose one of the loudest screams he'd uttered in the 18 years he'd been alive.

"STEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIN!"

Even with the warning and the obstruction of his ears, Marcus jumped at the sudden, piercing sound. "Jesus Christ, man. God, I think you gave me tinnitus." He unplugged his ears and itched them, as if he were trying to physically get the sound out of them.

"I did give you a warning."

"Well, if he didn't hear THAT, then I doubt that he's in the room. Or in the school still. Or on the planet."

That made the blond's heart sink. What the fuck was going to happen to them both now? They were trapped in a music closet with no one around to get them out, and they both despised one another. Everything was going wrong for them, and chances were that the janitors wouldn't be in the music room for a while.

Marcus turned around and let his back slide down the door until he was in a sitting position. "We're completely and totally fucked, aren't we?"

The shorter boy looked down at him, took a second of pause, and then hesitantly slid down next to him. "Maybe, maybe not. But neither of us are gonna back down, are we? We might as well make the most of this situation while we're trapped in here. We both have our phones, right? We can at least listen to some music."

A silence went through the both of them like a ghost.

"...Sure."

Brandon got up and dusted his pants off, walking toward the file cabinets and setting his phone on top of one of them. With a couple of taps against the screen, he had a fast song playing that he figured Marcus would appreciate. Despite his image, Marcus seemed like the type to like all different kinds of music.

The song in question was "BeachBoy" by McCafferty, and Brandon reached a hand down to Marcus to help him up. "Come on. Let's dance."

"What the fuck do you think we're going to do? We're just gonna mosh in a cramped closet?"

"Well it sure beats sitting and brooding."

Marcus hesitated, almost like he was trying to process the argument that Brandon had just made, but he shrugged and then grabbed his hand, with a lopsided smile. "What the hell even is this song? It started with some dude yelling, and now he's talking about wanting to kiss a girl's forehead."

"I have no idea what's going on in this song, but it's really upbeat and dancy!"

The two of them continued to dance, each laughing when the other did a move that made them look silly or even downright stupid in some aspect. Brandon was reminded of how well they had gotten along before middle school seemed to tear their friendship apart. They had been near inseparable when they were little kids, but after Brandon started trying out for sports, his new teammates had started trying to move him away from Marcus. Coincidentally, that was around the time that Marcus had come out as bisexual on Facebook.

The song ended and it turned to "SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK" by Joji. Marcus looked at Brandon, reading his features.

The blond felt heat start to rise into his cheeks and he said, "U-Um, we can skip this one-"

"No, let's slow dance. I've never gotten the chance to do that yet." Marcus bowed down and smiled. "Would you do me the honor of dancing with me?"

Brandon couldn't help but let out a laugh. "Some fucking honor, huh?"

The brunet stood back upright to his natural height, looking down at Brandon. "Dude, stop being so self-deprecating and no homo slow dance with your best friend from elementary school."

The angel and devil on Brandon's shoulders were having a field day with this. The devil was telling him to do it, and to let himself get just a little closer, to lean into the crook of Marcus's neck and let their faces get just a little too close to be just friends. The angel told him to reject the offer politely.

To be fair, Brandon had never been one to blindly listen to authority.

He took Marcus's hand and they stood a good distance apart (Marcus made sure to make a joke about leaving room for Jesus), and Brandon's heart thumped against his ribcage every time he spared a glance at the way that their fingers intertwined. Sure, he was gay as hell, but this was just kind of overkill at this point. He had never had a crush on Marcus before, so why the hell was he acting like this? Plus, they had hated each other moments prior, so how could they have gone from that to a slow dance in a closet?

Marcus's hand moved a bit on Brandon's waist and he gulped, breaking his gaze away from Marcus's features to dart nervously around the room. "Hey, don't be nervous. You should have no reason to be worried."

"Well, I'm trapped in a closet with someone that used to hate my guts, and now he's slow dancing with me. So that's not exactly the most comfortable situation to be in."

"I never hated you. I'm just... scared, man. You stopped being my friend back in middle school after I came out, and we haven't even talked to each other since then. I was worried that you'd be like the other football guys and reject me for that reason. You were my best friend, and I didn't want you to stop liking me because-"

Brandon's tongue moved faster than his mind as he blurted out, "I never stopped liking you, Marcus."

As soon as he had realized what he'd said, he immediately felt the urge to break himself away from their dance and clap a hand over his mouth. Marcus's cheeks and the bridge of his nose turned a light shade of pink and he gave a sheepish grin. "That's reassuring. Um... so... if you were so willing to avoid me, then what was it?"

The blond let out a sigh before answering. "I mean, it wasn't because I was a homophobe. I'm far from it. It was just... easier to listen to what the other, popular sporty dudes said rather than actively go against it. It's like trying to run against the current in a white rapids river, you know?"

Marcus nodded. "I get that. It's unfortunate that they're all a bunch of assholes."

"Yeah... they'd shoot me behind the back of the shed if I told them that I was slow dancing with you in here. Not, like, literally. That would be a crime. Just like, metaphorically, you know? It's an allegory."

"You're still as awkward as you were back in 6th grade, man. Good to know."

Brandon couldn't help but laugh. "Well, I'm happy that I haven't disappointed you."

It wasn't until the laughter in his stomach had subsided that he realized that the two of them had both stepped a little closer to one another. The music swelled as silence hung in the air like a chandelier. Neither one of them dared to break it, let the entire thing crash down and launch shrapnel into themselves.

There were two routes he could go here.

The first route would be to admit everything, that he was gay, that he was scared of getting hurt, that he didn't want to leave Marcus behind, but it was just so much easier than laying down in front of his oppressors and staying still so they could kick him. The second route would be to let the moment pass and never act on it again.

Both of them were completely plausible, with possible pros and cons. The first one, in particular, was a risky gambit. If Marcus believed him, that would mean that he had the knowledge of his sexuality, and if that secret got out, the pedestal that Brandon had been building for himself to stand on would suddenly crumble beneath his feet.

The second one was safer, but it would make Brandon feel guilty, and wondering if he could've made his friend back.

Despite the risk, he couldn't bring himself to even consider the second one for too long.

"This is fucking hilarious, by the way," he started out. Marcus looked at him, confounded by what this statement could mean, but Brandon continued before he could specifically question it. "I mean, think about it. We're both trapped in a closet, and we're slow dancing with each other in here. No one else can see or hear us, and we're just so desperate to get out of here, but while we're here, we're trying to make everything the best for ourselves that it can be. You're bisexual, and I'm gay. You managed to escape your inner closet, but I haven't. I'm trapped in a closet that's trapped inside my body, that's trapped in another, bigger closet. I'm a Russian nesting doll of self-loathing and internalized hatred."

He watched as Marcus's features softened from being utterly baffled by his words to being sympathetic, and he let out a breath that he didn't even realize he had started holding as he felt Marcus's hand squeeze against his reassuringly.

"You could've told me. I would've understood."

"No, I really couldn't have. This involved you more than you realize it did."

Deep down, Brandon's memory was unraveling itself, loosening the knot it had created around his brain. He realized that the reason he had come to terms with being gay was because he had a crush on Marcus, and he had had a crush on him ever since middle school. It was like the balloon in his chest was starting to deflate; it was finally going to let him breathe.

Marcus's eyes darted across Brandon's features, and Brandon caught his gaze right before closing his eyes, bracing for impact.

"This involved you more than you realize it did, too."

Brandon opened his eyes, unable to comprehend the answer. He was about to ask what the "this" in question was referring to, before Marcus's hands were cupped around his face and he was leaning forward.

The music had long since stopped, and had turned into another fast, poppy tune, but at this point, Brandon didn't care, because he and Marcus were kissing, and this was what he had been waiting for and wanting since he was 13. The string that had been keeping hold of his memories was now unraveling, and was now turning itself into tapestry, ready to capture this particular moment in time forever. Sparks weren't flying, fireworks weren't going off, but there were splashes of color that Brandon could see behind his eyelids.

It wasn't even the feeling of lips against his own that Brandon could focus on. The way that Marcus's thumbs brushed against the sides of his face, the subtle head tilts that he made to make sure that they weren't bumping noses, the warmth radiating from him and against his skin... those were what romance movies were made of.

He felt weightless as Marcus pulled away. He made sure to capture the details of his face afterward as well; he cataloged the way that Marcus bit his lip, the few seconds that passed before he opened his eyes again, the flick of his gaze from Brandon's lips to his eyes, the slow soft exhale he let out.

Suddenly, a voice was heard from outside of the room.

"FINALLY, YOU TWO WORKED OUT YOUR ISSUES!"

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr @sunflowershayne for more dumb content featuring your local village idiot, me


End file.
